PECM Issue 21 2016 | Page 48

SteamBio enabling sustainable carbon for industry SteamBio is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Union research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 636865 M anrochem Limited is a key member of SteamBio an Horizon 2020 [H2020] collaborative research project, providing technical management to a consortium of eleven specialist commercial and research organisations throughout Europe located in the UK, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. The project is funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Research and Development Programme. SteamBio H2020 project is financed within the “bio economy” theme of the current funding round with the aim being to increase the value of bio derived source materials that are currently not being effectively utilised. The ultimate aim is to replace mineral derived coal, oil and gas with renewable source ingredients; the challenge being to replace on a “like for like basis” i.e. provide material into the supply chain that the existing supply chain organisations will recognise. Biochemical production currently amounts to approximately $100 billion per annum, which is an extremely big number but is actually quite small in comparison to the existing total chemical market size of about $3 trillion. Currently bio based supply to market is mainly “1st generation”, which means that biochemical source material competes with available food supplies, either directly by using say corn starch or sugar or indirectly through land use. 48 PECM Issue 21 This is not sustainable long term and has led to research and investment into what is known as 2nd and 3rd generation sources, which is where the SteamBio project is positioned to provide platform technologies within the bio-energy and biochemical fields of endeavour. The bio-energy market is currently the better developed arena within the bio-industry field and is expanding. From 2008 EU wood pellet use for energy generation has increased from 2.5 million tons of oil equivalent [MTOE] and is projected to reach 20 to 32 MTOE or as source biomass approximately 50 to 80 million metric tons by 2020 [source European Biomass Association]. As the demand for bio-energy has grown the fragility of the current supply model has become apparent which has a deleterious impact on 2nd generation bio-chemicals production. • Existing forestry resources in Europe are insufficient to meet market demand, resulting in significant imports from North America and other regions with competition for supplies emerging from East Asia and elsewhere. Concerns have been expressed on imported supplies with regards ecological stress, environmental impact of shipping around the globe and competition from other use. • There is abundant biomass resource across Europe that is not currently being used to supply the market. For instance, it has been estimated that there are potentially 100 MTOE of agricultural residues alone. However, these residues are not in a form that can be readily accessed by a large scale bio-economy. So what does SteamBio hope to achieve? The project has two themes: • Bio-energy – converting agricultural residues into valuable fuel with sufficiently high energy value to make it worthwhile transporting the material from its source location to its demand location. It is this problem that has prevented anything other than “local solutions” being applied to the source material with the limit to exploitation being local demand is insufficient for the total available local material. • Biochemical – all biomass is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen bound together in structures that make the material a solid rather than a liquid. If the fundamental molecules of the biomass can be re-arranged then the source material can be converted into a gas or a liquid. It is these future gasses and liquids that the existing supply chain recognises and wants. SteamBio partners from industry and academia have a common purpose; to create a viable business based on beneficiation of forestry and agricultural residues and will demonstrate economic viability in different rural locations for the recovery of usable bio-carbon from indigenous forestry and farming residues in tonnage quantities. In SteamBio this bio-carbon will be demonstrated as a coal replacement for an industrial lime kiln and as a carbon source in pilot scale biorefineries.